By Adam Cruise - Daily Maverick The grudging release of previously undisclosed mortality data from the Kruger National Park offers a rare glimpse into how elephants are dying. But the numbers reveal something else: how little the public knows about the decisions made...
By Don Pinnock - Daily Maverick As South Africa wrestles with elephant management, delays and a lack of accountability could push culling from a last resort to an all-too-possible outcome. Deputy Environment Minister Narend Singh told Parliament this week that culling...
By Adam Cruise - Daily Maverick The continued confinement of Lammie, Ramadiba and Mopane rests on an assumption that their needs can be met within the Johannesburg Zoo. The available evidence suggests that this assumption is no longer secure. An alternative exists....
By Adam Cruise - Daily Maverick KwaZulu-Natal’s elephant ‘overpopulation crisis’ is being presented as scientific inevitability. But official replies reveal contradictions, missing evidence and a regulatory process that has yet to catch up with the rhetoric. The claim...
By Don Pinnock - Daily Maverick A willingness to kill elephants as a management tool in North West’s Madikwe Nature Reserve suggests a shift in South Africa’s conservation approach. What was once a last resort may be becoming standard practice. t’s been a bad few...
By Stephanie Klarmann - Mongabay The latest statistics on South Africa’s professional (“trophy”) hunting industry reveal a large increase in animals hunted, with numbers set to rise in coming years, under the logic that the revenue generated is necessary for managing...
By David Akana - Mongabay Dzanga Bai is an exceptional forest clearing where hundreds of elusive forest elephants gather, offering scientists and visitors opportunities to observe their behavior, social interactions and family dynamics in the open. Mineral-rich soil...
By Bool Smuts - Daily Maverick Use of biodiversity does involve trade-offs. But complexity does not justify analytical shortcuts. Trade-offs do not justify false equivalence. And regulatory structure and adaptive management without transparent rules does not...
By Adam Cruise - Daily Maverick Scientists have a vital role to play. But they cannot arbitrate values, nor legitimise them by implication. When they attempt to do so, they risk overstepping their authority and end up narrowing, rather than enriching, the debate....
By Adam Cruise - Daily Maverick Four years ago, Parliament endorsed a shift in wildlife governance that would recognise animal wellbeing as part of conservation policy. Today the forum created to implement that reform has been snubbed – and Parliament may need to ask...